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Thursday, 25 May 2017

‘NO CHANCE OF SWAZI POLICE UNION’

A suggestion from
schoolteachers in Swaziland that the kingdom’s police should form a trade union
will almost certainly be dead in the water.

There is a bitter history
in the kingdom ruled by King Mswati III, sub-Saharan Africa’s last absolute
monarch, of oppression of police union rights.

The Swaziland National
Association of Teachers (SNAT) said at a workshop that it wanted an expansion
of trade unionism in the kingdom to include the police. The Observer on Saturday (13 May 2017) reported
SNAT representatives suggested the police should follow other countries with a
well-functioning police union system such as in Botswana, Namibia and South
Africa in the region and form a union to engage in collective bargaining.

History is against such
progress. A Swaziland Police Union (SWAPU) had been formed in 2005 and failed
after a struggle for recognition when both the Swaziland High Court and the
Supreme Court dismissed it as illegal. The Police Union became incorporated to
the legally-recognised Royal Swaziland Police Staff Association.

In September 2008, the then
Police Commissioner
Edgar Hillary applied for a court order to arrest Khanyakwezwe Mhlanga the
Secretary General of the Police Union because Mhlanga was illegally mobilising
officers.

This was part of a bitter fight that continued for
many months. In April 2008, Swazi
police officers disobeyed their commander when instructed to arrest fellow
police officers who were trying to hold a trade union meeting. So, the senior
officers themselves had to try to break up the meeting. As they tried to arrest
trade union leaders their fellow unionists freed them and they escaped to
safety.

The Times of
Swaziland (19 October
2007), the only independent daily newspaper in the kingdom, gave vivid
details of the disobedience of the junior officers who were on duty to
break up the meeting. They were given a direct instruction from Regional
Commander Senior Superintendent Caiphas Mbhamali to arrest the unionists, ‘but
they did not take his orders as they stood and watched’.

More than 40 police in total were at the scene to
break up the meeting, but only 10 senior officers actually tried to make the
arrests.

The Swazi
Observer, Swaziland’s only other daily newspaper and which is in effect
owned by King Mswati, ignored the event altogether.

Swaziland police Deputy Commissioner of Police Isaac
Magagula had warned the unionist against holding the meeting. The Swazi Observer had the previous week (12 October 2007) quoted
Magagula saying, ‘It is only with the expressed approval of the commissioner
that police officers can convene or attend any meeting.’

Although SWAPU lost its case in both the High Court
and Supreme Court there was one
dissenting judgment.High CourtJudge Qinisile Mabuza said that
existing regulations that banned trade unions were inconsistent with the Swazi
Constitution, which allowed for freedom of association. She also said Swaziland
laws needed to conform to international standards and the International Labour
Organisation (ILO) conventions.

The Times of
Swaziland (30 April 2008)
quoted the judge saying Swaziland needed, ‘to conform to modern trends in a
democratic society in meeting the [union’s] expectations and fulfilling their
constitutional rights’.

The Times
further reported that the judge said that denying officers their ‘fundamental
rights’ to form a union were, ‘repugnant to good governance and the rule of
law, and particularly that the sanction for forming a union is dismissal, which
is a disciplinary measure’.

She called the existing laws banning the union ‘old
discriminatory and oppressive’. She went on, ‘They are inconsistent with
Chapter III of the constitution. They should be declared null and void. They
have no place in a democratic society.’